


pieces of a puzzle

by besidemethewholedamntime



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Academy Era, Alternate Universe, Angst, Drabbles, F/M, Fluff, Future Fic, Gen, brotp Hunter and Simmons, quakerider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-24 22:25:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 3,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19732984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besidemethewholedamntime/pseuds/besidemethewholedamntime
Summary: and they all fit together somehow. A collection of drabble prompt fills for aosficnet2's july drabble challenge.





	1. fs + 'can we cuddle?'

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!  
> You may have seen these on tumblr already but I'm just uploading them here to keep them all in one nice and tidy place!  
> I hope you enjoy :)

“Can we cuddle?”

Fitz thinks he’s misheard. He must have. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“I did but I must have heard wrong.” He narrows his eyes suspiciously. “You never want to cuddle?”

Jemma shrugs. “I’m in the mood for it.”

They sit on the couch, in front of a roaring fire. tv playing in the background. He admits it’s certainly romantic. “Fine,” he says, still unconvinced by her motives. “We can cuddle.”

But so rarely do they just ‘cuddle’ that it takes several minutes of adjusting to make sure that they’re both comfortable.

“Oaft,” he says, when there’s an elbow in his ribs. “Enough. We just must not be great at spontaneous cuddling.”

“Maybe we’re just overthinking it too much,” Jemma offers. “It’s okay, we don’t have to.”

They get lost in whatever tv show they’re watching, both dozing off several times.

Fitz wakes up once and finds, somehow, inexplicably, they’ve drifted together on the couch. Jemma’s head his on his chest, his chin rests on her head and his arms are around her, holding her against him.

“Hey, Jemma,” he says, gently waking her up. “We did it.”

“Yay,” she mumbles. “Go us.” And promptly falls back to sleep.


	2. fs + 'i'm dying'

“I can’t believe I’m dying.” 

Fitz tries to laugh but he really can’t. “Stop being dramatic. You’re not, not for a really long time.”

At least her eyes haven’t changed, and they’re as soft as ever when she says, “Come on now, Fitz. I thought we had passed the denial stage ages ago.” 

Except he doesn’t think he’ll ever be out of the denial stage. His wife, his partner for most of his life, mother to his children, keeper of his heart... her absence will be too much to bear. He’ll always be in denial about that. 

He smiles weakly. “You have to let me have something, Jemma. Please, just… something.” 

With a trembling hand she reaches to swipe away his tears. “None of these, thank you. Not until there’s actually something to cry about.” 

Except there is something to cry about and they both know it. Which is why she lets his head fall into her shoulder, lets him cry while she holds him tightly. 

Her heartbeat is audible in his ear, he can feel it on his cheek. If they’re good enough, grateful enough, maybe they can stay like this. Maybe they can make that heartbeat last forever.


	3. fs + 'is that my shirt?'

“Is that my shirt? Oh my God, that is my shirt, isn’t it?”

Sarah giggles up at him, splashing yet more purple paint on the huge sheet of paper in front of her. A significant amount ends up on his shirt. Fitz winces.

“Jemma,” he turns to his wife, who stands by their daughter. “ _That was my new shirt.”_

Her mouth forms an ‘o’, hands coming up to her face. “Oh, Fitz, I’m sorry I never thought…” She watches as their daughter adds blue paint to the mix and winces. “I’m _so_ sorry.”

He supposes it does look a little bit like one of his old shirts, but it was folded neatly in the drawer and it was supposed to be for he and Jemma’s date night next week and-

“Daddy! Look at what I’m doing!” Sarah giggles and flicks the now bright pink paint from her brush halfway across the page and halfway up herself. It’s even in her _hair._

“Looks great, kiddo,” he manages to squeeze out.

“I’ll get you a new shirt, Fitz,” Jemma promises, discreetly hiding her smile.

“It’s fine,” he waves it away.

The shirt may have been costly, yes, but his daughter’s smile? Priceless.


	4. fs + 'you're making me blush'

“Eugh, Jemma. You look awful.” 

“Oh, Fitz, stop. You’re making me blush,” Jemma deadpans. Then she looks him up at down. “I hardly think you can be talking.”

Her husband in a much worse state than she: hair sticking up at all angels, bags the size of suitcases under his eyes. The price of having a newborn again, it seems, is taking it’s toll. 

“I don’t remember it being this hard before,” he grumbles. She would pity him a little, if she hadn’t just popped out an actual human being only two days ago. 

“We know what it’s like now,” she sighs, sitting down on the couch with him. “The mystery is gone.”

“No more excitement. No more wonder. Just the dull, monotonous drudgery of parenthood.”

They look at each other, managing three seconds before they both burst out laughing. 

“It’s still as magic as it was before,” Fitz says. “Even more so. We have two of them now.” 

She thinks of her son, sleeping soundly in the room next to Sarah’s. She adores her baby brother, could barely be prised from his side at bedtime. 

“I know,” she agrees, taking his hand. “I wouldn’t change it for the world.”


	5. fs + 'you're cute when you're angry'

“I can’t believe you would do this, Jemma! I actually cannot believe it!”

She looks up to where Fitz has stormed into the lab. She has seen him angry plenty of times, but this is the first she has seen him _furious._ At _her._

“You’re cute when you’re angry, you know,” she tells him, looking back to her computer, trying to find her place in the report again.

“Oh, come off it, Jemma.” This is the second time he has used her given name now. “You had no right to do that. None.”

Indignant, she whirls around to face him. “We agreed on this!”

“I thought we were going to talk about it more!”

“And I thought we had already made our decision!”

He scoffs, rubbing his hand on the back of his neck. There’s a split second where his face changes, and she sees that it’s fear and not anger that is driving him.

“You had no right,” he says, quietly now, pointing a shaking finger, “to tell Coulson that we had agreed to his bloody insane idea to go into the field. None.”

Too late does she see the trail of misunderstandings that have led them here.

“He needed an answer, and I thought we’d agreed we’d take this opportunity.”

“I just…” He swallows. “it looks great and all, but it’s in the _field._ What if something happens to us out there?”

“We won’t be expected to be actual field agents, Fitz,” she tells him, rolling her eyes back to her monitor. She can handle his genuine fears, but not when he’s looking for reasons to be afraid. Especially not when they might coincide with her own, private fears. “We’ll just be running tests and things, all from the safety of a lab. It’s just on wheels instead.”

But she can still feel him panicking and so she beams at him and says:

“We’ll be together. Nothing bad can happen as long as we’re at each other’s side, right?”

He looks a bit more convinced now, and returns her smile with a genuine one of his own. “Right.”


	6. brotp Simmons & Hunter + 'do you trust me?'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> full disclosure: I can't quite remember the season 3 timeline so I realise this may not quite fit but for the sake of this drabble perhaps we can pretend it does?

The nightmare is a terrible one. She wakes up from it with sweat on her forehead, her hands tightly gripping the bedsheet.

3am. That hour where bad things always happen. There’s no point in trying to go back to sleep. Jemma sighs, rubs the tears from her eyes, and prepares to walk to the kitchen. She’s only been back from Maveth for a week now, give or take. Tea should do the trick.

It turns out that she’s not the only one away at this hour. Hunter sits there quietly with his own mug of tea, staring into the darkness. He doesn’t even seem startled as she approaches.

“You alright, love?”

She cannot lie to him and says nothing, staring dumbly, not trusting her voice to speak.

He nods. “Yeah, I get you. It’s hard, coming back from something like that. Wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.” But then he laughs, without any real humour and says quietly, not to her, “well, maybe I would.”

“I want it to be like how it was before,” she whispers.

“I know.” He pats the space next to him on the sofa, waiting until she joins him before he continues. “But that can’t happen. The best thing to do is keep on going, look to the future, even the small stuff. Hell, some days I used to congratulate myself on brushing my teeth. Of course, I knew if I didn’t then Bobbi would call me a disgusting bastard.”

She laughs. He makes it easy.

“Hey, that’s better,” he says gently. “Look, Jemma, do you trust me?”

The thing is that she does, almost implicitly. She nods.

“One day it’ll get better. All of this won’t seem as terrible. It’ll seem so far away.” His eyes are impossibly soft. “I promise you that.”


	7. fs + 'are you flirting with me?'

“Wow. These results… they’re _amazing._ ”

“Why thank you,” Jemma replies absent-mindedly, busy planning her other experiment.

“No, seriously. How did you get results like that?”

She turns to where Fitz is standing by the computer, scratching his head in apparent confusion as to how she could produce what she has definitely produced before.

“Are you flirting with me by any chance?”

“What?” His head snaps up, “No. Of course not. Why?”

She raises an eyebrow. “Of course not?”

It’s fun to watch him backtrack. “No, I – that’s not what-” He huffs. “Why are you asking?”

She turns back to her papers, hiding her smile. “You seem rather surprised at my ability to produce such results.”

He comes to stand behind her, arms suddenly around her waist. His voice is warm in her ear.

“Not surprised,” he whispers. “Just amazed. Like I am at everything you do.”

She reaches to give him a quick kiss on the cheek for his soppiness then bids him to leave her – she has work to do after all.

He’s almost at the door before he stops and calls back – “For your information, Jemma, I don’t really think I have to flirt anymore: you’re my wife.”


	8. fs + 'you're the best'

She thinks she’s never loved anybody more than she loves him right in this very moment.

“You’re the best,” she tells him dreamily, swaying with him to music that is barely there. “The very best.”

He’s very solid beneath her hands and doesn’t appear be as swaying as much as he is. There are so many stars all around them, twinkling into the back of her eyes. It feels a bit like they’re in a dream. How funny. Fancy her having a dream of Fitz.

“Alright,” he laughs, a low and comforting sound that makes her hold onto him tighter. “No more gin for you, I think.”

“But you are the very best,” she protests. And indeed, he is. After all, who else would pretend to be her boyfriend so she wouldn’t have to appear at her cousin’s very well-done wedding as the single cat lady to be judged by everyone from her grandmother to the flower girls and back again? Nobody except Fitz, that’s for sure.

(He had told her she was being a little bit ridiculous; after all, she doesn’t even own a cat. After his grumbling, however, he had simply asked what colour his suit had to be, and what time and where to pick her up.)

“You’ve been so extraordinary,” she slurs, having a bit of trouble with that last word, syllables getting stuck on her tongue. “The whole time, really. So extraordinary.”

“I’m gonna remind you that you said this in the morning, just do you know,” he tells her as he gently spins her around the dancefloor once more.

 _I won’t mind_ she thinks, leaning her head against the cool fabric of his jacket. “That’s okay, ‘cause you’re the best,” she mumbles, head spinning but Fitz strong and steady beneath her. “The very best”


	9. quakerider + 'are you upset with me?'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the word 'cookie' may appear in here only twice but it caused an unbelievable amount of stress and confusion on my part as to what cookies, in the US, actually are

“Are you upset with me?” Robbie asks cautiously, standing at the doorway of the kitchen.

“What do you think?” Daisy snaps, rummaging around in another cupboard, not looking at him.

Honestly, he’s unsure. He’s this second home from grocery shopping.

“Uh…” he starts, cut off when Daisy snaps again, “Of _course_ I’m upset with you!”

Robbie mentally starts listing everything he’s done over the past few days, everything he hasn’t done, but nothing springs to mind.

“You _ate_ the last of my cookies, _then_ you went to the store and didn’t buy more!”

He doesn’t remember finishing them. In fact, he thinks it might have been Daisy who finished them last night, but he’s not really in position to argue. Arguing with her normally is usually something of a spectacle, but arguing with her while she’s heavily pregnant and evidently hungry for cookies seems like a recipe for something like disaster.

“I’m sorry,” he tells her, trying not to smile. “I’ll go back now and buy some.”

She huffs. “I guess that could work.”

“I’ll be going then.” He turns away. “Be back soon.”

“Robbie?”

He turns back to her. “Yeah?”

“I love you.”

He smiles. “I love you, too.”


	10. fs + 'i want to protect you'

“And for you! Don’t even pretend like you care, Fitz. That you really care. It’s nothing but a job!”

“Don’t you dare,” he tells her, the quiet anger in his voice so much worse than any yelling. “Don’t you dare tell me that I don’t care. This isn’t just a job for me; I want to protect you. I need to protect you. If anything happened to you it would kill me, Jemma, so how can you stand there and say that I don’t care when you know bloody well that it’s the opposite?”

He’s right. Truly, he is. It’s not about him, this sense of being lost in the wilderness, not knowing anyone, not trusting anyone. The only person she’s been close to… _loved_ … in such a long time is Fitz, someone who’s paid to protect her, literally jump in front of a bullet for her. There was always going to come a day where she doubted his true feelings; she’s surprised he’s taken it as well as he has.

“I’m sorry,” she says, pinching the bridge of her nose, a gesture that she has picked up from him. “It’s just so hard sometimes, to trust what’s right in front of me.”

His face softens and he comes over to take her hand. “I know, I know.” The gentleness almost oversets her. “But Jemma, I promise you this is real. The realest thing I’ve ever known. This isn’t just a job for me.”

She smiles tearily. “You’ve said that before.”

His thumb gently strokes her hand, making waves. She loves him so much she doesn’t know what to do with it.

“And I’ll say it as many times as you need me to,” he whispers, kissing her lightly. “I love you. Nothing can change that. Not now. Not ever.”


	11. fs + 'i've liked you for a while now'

“And what I’m saying is that, really, I’ve liked you for a while now. A long while. Longer than I can remember. So, I think, with that in mind, what makes the most sense is for me to ask you if you’ll marry me.”

Jemma looks to Fitz, last sentence hanging in the air between them. She waits for one second, then two, before finally asking, “Well, what do you think?”

He clears his throat before letting the smile grow on his face. “It’s brilliant, Jemma. The perfect way for him to propose. Viewers will love it.”

She looks so pleased that it stops his heart for a moment. “Do you think?”

“Yup. Absolutely. Rounds off the scene perfectly.” He goes back to his own desk in the office the two of them share. Sometimes he wishes they didn’t. It would be easier not to get distracted by her smile if there were more than just two of them in here.

“Brilliant. I’ll just tidy it up a bit before sending it.”

She types some more before throwing a question over her shoulder. “You don’t think that Victoria will find it too eager, do you? I mean Tommy’s been in love with her for so long that he might be coming across as a bit much? A love like that, makes a person say funny things, doesn’t it?”

It’s like his throat has closed up and it takes concentration to get his words out. “Well,” he begins carefully, “that’s how he is, isn’t it? He is eager. That’s what she loves about him.”

“You’re right,” Jemma sighs, clearly relieved that this television world they’ve been building holds up after all. “And he deserves to be happy, Tommy does. He’s loved her while they’ve been working together all this time, never saying anything…” She gives a laugh. “And Victoria never realised it. That must have been so frustrating for him – no wonder he has that habit of banging his head off the desk like he does. I like to think I would realise something like that.”

“You'd think you would,” he murmurs.

“You’re so great at getting in his head, Fitz. I sometimes wonder how you do it.”

Getting into Tommy’s head, writing about his pining for his co-worker who never seems to realise his true feelings, is not terribly hard for Fitz. He knows exactly how the poor bastard feels.


	12. quakerider + 'you'd be a great mom'

They’re at the park, strolling through arm on arm. It’s a lovely day, and the place is full of kids letting go of balloons in favour of their ice cream cones, flying past each other on bicycles and scooters, and kicking their balls up into the trees. Daisy rescues one, gently quaking it down before handing it to an awestruck little girl who then squeals before running away.

Robbie tugs on her arm gently. “You’d be a great mom, you know.”

She looks at him, incredulous. “What? No. I wouldn’t. Trust me.”

And she wouldn’t be. It’s not like she had the best role models, or at least not until well into her adult life. Kids are cute and precious and she’s well… not. The way she views herself has improved a lot in recent years, but not so much that she thinks she’d be a great mom anytime soon.

“And trust me, _chica_ ,” he tells her, no joking in his voice anymore. “Any kid would be lucky to have you for a mom.”

Her throat begins to feel a little tight at the sincerity in his eyes. She thinks of what their child would look like, would be like, the dreams she’d encourage them to have. How she’d teach them their numbers and their alphabet and basic computer code. How she’d always hug them and kiss them and make sure they were never alone. The way she’d make sure they knew they were loved more than anything in all the worlds she has seen.

But for now it is just a dream, an idea that only resides in that small, private part of her mind, and she manages to force out an affectionate laugh, pull her lips into an affectionate smile and say, “Come on, you. Let’s get going.”


	13. fs and hunter brotp + 'i'm pregnant'

The first thing Hunter does when he wakes up in the morning is check the group chat that he has with Fitz and Simmons.

He can’t quite remember how they have one, or why, or why Bobbi isn’t in it (and it’s far too late to add her now) but they do. And, as has been his habit for the past couple of years, the first thing he does in the morning is check it. There’s always the odd message, usually something he can reply to after breakfast, but this morning a message from Fitz really catches his eye and he feels it’s worthy of a reply right away.

_I’m pregnant!_

He’s not really thinking clearly because it’s so bloody early and Bobbi is already up and not here to stop him from saying something stupid.

_Eh, congrats, mate. I didn’t think you had those capabilities but you know, good for you._ He adds in a thumbs up for good measure.

It’s Jemma that replies first. _Oh. I didn’t realise Fitz was logged in on my phone._

Then Fitz, real Fitz, chimes in with: _It’s Jemma that’s pregnant, but thanks for your support._

Well, that makes more sense. Then he realises the full implications of the message. _Jemma’s pregnant._ Fitzsimmons are spawning. In merely months there will be a little baby version of his best friends in this world and to be honest he’s pretty bloody excited about that.

They’ve got their happy ending. The one Fitz was so convinced wouldn’t happen. Ah, it’s always nice to prove somebody wrong.

He grins to himself. Nothing will be able to touch him for the rest of the day, he’s sure of it.

“Hey, Bob!” He calls, swinging his legs out of bed. “You’ll never believe what I’ve got to tell you!”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please feel free to leave kudos/comments. Please feel free not to. Either way, I hope you have a lovely day!


End file.
